The Old Clock

by Stephen

His clock kept up with him mostly; It somehow avoided the forgotten fate of everything else that he had in his possession for a long time. He overlooked the scars on his finger from hopping over a chain link fence, the center piece on the kitchen table, the empty hangers that used to hold ferns on the porch. Things like that. The clock would get ahead more often than falling back: Sometimes claiming tomorrow to be today, others jumping several hours ahead, and others still, weeks, months without him really noticing. He didn’t want to get rid of it, as it wasn’t really his to begin with. He liked having it around, anyway. It was given to him to hang onto by someone he can’t remember ever seeing–it’d been there since before his memory had really gotten its footing. The bed he slept on was sort of the same way.

A couple days could easily go by without him giving it much notice because it sat nestled beneath his sweater and his ribcage beside the picture of his parents on their wedding day that he’d found in an old, floral-printed photo album at his grandparents house. Every one of the album’s sleeves were empty; between the back cover and the last page was a neglected pile of Christmas cards and letters from people who were dead. It was the only picture he knew still existed of the two of them. He found it nestled between a birthday card from some man named Earnest Key and a letter from some woman named Bootsie, which he really, really hoped was a nickname.

All of this to say, when he came to the point of noticing the clock again, it was sometimes off. It wasn’t really all that reliable as a clock. It worked better as a comfort thing. He liked knowing it was still ticking and still doing its best to do what it was supposed to do, which he could relate to.

Rewinding his clock felt a lot like praying to God for manna.
Or something.

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